People

While the list of budget problems facing the MTA is long, Supervisor Bevan Dufty believes he can save them a few million just by changing the way they do customer service.

When we wrote about the trial pedestrian plaza on 17th Street and Market Street that DPW expects to start this May, the story generated numerous doubts about how the city would create a successful public space out of a busy street abutting a gas station. 

Curitiba, Brazil first adopted its Master Plan in 1968. Since then, it has become a city well known for inventive urban planning and affordable (to the user and the city) public transportation.

District 2 Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier represents the Presidio, Cow Hollow, Marina, Pacific Heights and part of the Richmond District. She was originally appointed to her seat by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2004, and comes from a well-known political family. Her grandfather, Joe Alioto, was mayor from 1968-1976 and her aunt, Angela Alioto, was President of the Board of Supervisors and a candidate for mayor.

As mayor of Milwaukee from 1988 to 2004, CNU President John Norquist made urbanism and livability top priorities. Some of his most notable achievements centered on the redevelopment of highway corridors with street grids and infill, culminating with the demolition of the Park East Freeway in 2002 -- one of the largest voluntary highway removal projects undertaken in America. Other projects, like the introduction of a light rail system, never reached fruition.

With San Francisco about to embark on its first pilot street closure, I thought it would be appropriate to revisit this conversation with the Open Planning Project's Executive Director, Mark Gorton, and New York City's Commissioner of the Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan, who has taken on the challenge of transforming NYC streets in a series of groundbreaking pilot projects. 

Mona Caron is a visual troubadour of street life in San Francisco. Her murals have become increasingly famous in their gorgeous detail, portraying San Francisco’s romantic past juxtaposed to inspired visions of its future. Equally powerful is the way each mural itself comes to anchor new public space, an open-air gallery where people meet and discuss, sharing ideas often growing from the rich street life she portrays in her murals.

“Rebuilding Market Street has become a civic obsession in San Francisco. The city’s main street has been torn up and rebuilt completely at least once in every generation since the Civil War.”